Eastern Front (1941)

This is how to select 1942: F3 is select; F4 is start; and F5 is reset. Press F3 until you reach Expert; then press F4 and then F3 again and then F4 to start on the 1942 level.

Jim

Jim - 27/10/2012

I have a manual. How do I down load to this site for everyone's use?

Jim - 22/05/2012

This is a reply to Jeff who had a question about the use of airpower.Air power goes over the unit that is going to be the attacking unit. The closer the air power is to the attacking unit, the more power you get.

Alfredo - 19/01/2011

My very first favourite game ever! This game is a gem

Jeff - 12/01/2011

Just tried to play this again, but can't find my instruction book, so I have a question... Do you move the air support unit over your ground unit that is attacking or over the unit you are attacking? Many thanks for any help!

Bob - 01/03/2010

The information for this game is incorrect. It was available as early as 1981-82 on cassette. I know I was playing it. I'll try to dig my copy out of storage to get the exact production date. BTW Great game!

James - 26/07/2008

Only during the Cold War could a game exist where you're on the side of Hitler's army against the Soviets.

Either way, they just don't make games like this anymore.

Adam Cruickshank - 24/09/2007

I got this free with my Currys/Dixons 800XL set. No decent instructions and I never understood what I was doing

Patrick Cunningham - 12/01/2007

Great Game. Anyone know where I can get the expert 1941 and expert 1942 game for the pc?

Will - 23/08/2006

Having the instructions for the games in pdf format would be great.

Dave Morgan - 01/08/2006

My first wargame and I can say that no game since has impressed me as much Eastern Front did. I used to have to wait 15 minutes for the game to load from cassette, but it was well worth the wait.

Focusing on tactics and strategy rather than flashy graphics, it's a true wargammer's game.

Nick Di-Perna - 27/12/2005

The Atari UK tape version is different to the cart version.

Javier - 30/11/2005

This is the best game ever. War game i mean. Best 8-bit programmer, only 8k, wow, this game rules.

Additional Comments

Some comments from Chris Crawford on this game (the full interview with Chris Crawford by James Hague can be found here):

JH: 'Eastern Front was a state of the art wargame in its time. What deficiencies of contemporary games were you trying to overcome?'

CC: 'Two: poor user interface and poor artificial intelligence. I came up with slick solutions to both problems. The AI was particularly clever. All the user I/O was taken care of during vertical blank processing, a few thousand cycles every 60th of a second. The AI itself ran during the mainline processing, using a system of convergent approximations. Thus, the AI started off with a stupid move and then kept examining improvements on it. You could take as long as you wanted to plan your own move, but every second you took to plan your move, the computer got another million cycles to refine its own move.'

JH: 'Why was Eastern Front released through the Atari Program Exchange instead of the official Atari label?'

CC: 'Because the Atari marketing people thought that a wargame would never sell.'